Christmas spirit

Managed to survive another Swedish Christmas and New Year. Starting to get the hang of it now. Having had 4 winter Christmas now, I don't think could accept a summer Christmas again. It's not the obvious factor of the "white Christmas" that makes the difference between the two hemispheres. It's a different emotional connection. I've written about this before, but it's worth bringing up once a year. To fully understand the difference, you have to physically experience the two. Not just as a tourist, but as a person living in both societies. To those people living in the Northern Hemisphere, imagine having Christmas in July. Hold on to that vision. I went through 40+ Christmas times in those conditions. As a child, I finished school in early December (November when I was in High School) and began my summer holidays. I would be on holiday until early February. My parents worked through until about the 22nd of December, and then they began their 3 week annual holidays. Being the middle of summer, we typically packed up as soon as possible and headed out to the countryside for the bulk of our holiday period. Swimming, fishing, camping, sunning, the usual summer stuff. In later years, as it got more common, we would fly to somewhere sunny and warm. This was our annual holidays, and we didn't want to waste a day of it.

At some point during the holidays, Christmas showed up. One day of excitement, and then it was back to the summer holidays again. Christmas was never (and this is the key difference) the major focus of the season. Rather, it was just one day during our fun packed holiday. Yes, we would get together with people. If the circumstances of the times allowed for it. Some family members would be in town, some would be away at the beach, some would already be away on their holidays. Being invited to a Christmas gathering wasn't a lot more special than being invited to a backyard barbeque. Often, in fact, that's what the Christmas gathering would consist of. We were one of the families who typically weren't around for the Christmas barbeque lunch. Most often we were already at a camping ground somewhere. We would wake up on Christmas morning, open Christmas presents, and then race off to the nearest water hole for a swim. That was Christmas taken care of for another year.

Of course, you only know what you know, and until 4 years ago, I thought that I was celebrating Christmas pretty well. I thought that what we were doing was perfectly normal and that everyone kind of felt the same way as all my family, friends, and neighbours did. It was a bit of a shock to find out that I had been missing Christmas and what it realyl could feel like as a genuine event on its own.

Having grown up in one system, I can really appreciate the more genuine emotional attachment to Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere. Especially the continental European Christmas Eve. Getting together to celebrate Christmas at the end of the day adds something, I feel. At the end of the day, all your work is finished. There's no stress over something more to do, there's no racing through a meal because you have to be somewhere else. You get a chance to enjoy the moment for what it is, and that doesn't happen very often. We sat around the evening table, as we've done now for the past 4 years, and simply enjoyed the company of each other. It's not a grand event, there's only the 4 of us, but 's a special time. We're not especially religious, any of us, so there's no talk about religious events of the day. But maybe, if there is a purpose to it all, in taking those hours to appreciate one another, we are achieving the desired purpose. I don't know, that's all a bit deep for me.